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Music Features
Publicize this!
An independent publicist might be the key to getting your music to the right earsPublished October 16, 2008 by M.D. Stewart in Music Features
In the north-east corner of Fast Forward’s Ramsay office, not far from the film and music editor’s desk, there’s a large, nondescript Tupperware bin. The bin is the final repository for the majority of the 50-plus CDs received by the paper every week. It’s the unfortunate reality of an extremely crowded musical landscape: artists pour their tears, sweat and hard-earned cash into a product, eagerly mailing it out with high hopes, only to have it end up in the bin. Multiply this by every daily, weekly and monthly paper and magazine in the country, not to mention freelancers, college and independent radio stations, Internet sites and blogs, and it quickly becomes obvious why publicists have steadily grown in importance over the last few years.
Ken Beattie of Vancouver’s Killbeat Music represents a new breed of publicity hound. Beattie and his ilk have parlayed a passion for music and extreme organizational skills into full-fledged careers. A musician himself, Beattie’s first tour of duty was promoting his own band, Radiogram. “People were e-mailing me saying, ‘You guys are everywhere. How did you do that? Who is your publicist,’” he recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, I am,’ and they said, ‘Well, can I hire you?’” Six years ago, it grew into a full-time gig. He’s gotten more and more efficient, but his standards have remained constant. “We’d never work for something we don’t fully believe in. That was a real drag early on, because I could have taken a few projects and made some money, but I didn’t, and it’s paid off,” he says.
For this year’s Polaris Music Prize, Beattie and assistant Jesse Tanaka organized a full-on campaign. “I sent each and every [juror] a personal email with links and download codes,” he says. “I only missed seven or eight out of 180 jurors. One of the guys from Montreal, who was on the jury, posted it to their internal site. Every single juror had access to every single one of our albums that was eligible.” Four of Killbeat’s artists were on the long list, and Two Hours Traffic survived to the final round.
Calgary record label Saved By Radio has worked with Killbeat since its inception, and founder Dawn Loucks credits Beattie with helping to get their releases to the top of the disc pile and the digital queue. “He’s walked a good line in terms of working with established people, like Corb Lund and people like that, as well as keeping the kooks around, like us,” she quips. “There’s so much good music available out there. The thing that’s going to differentiate your artists from other people’s artists is the people connections.”
It’s those people connections that made Calgarian Joelle May trade in her day job in oil and gas administration to form her own company, ModMay Promotions, a year and a half ago. The demand for her services has grown steadily. “It’s really caught fire in the last little while, which has been awesome. Recently, I’ve had some inquiries from England and I’ve even had a band from India get in touch with me inquiring about things I could possibly do for them.” In addition to publicity, May is able to book shows and tours and offer business-oriented advice to her clients. ModMay can take care of the details that artists don’t want to. Nor, she feels, should they have to. “They’re about the music, they’re the ones who write and perform the music, and I’m the one who says ‘That’s awesome. Let’s get it out there.’”
This spring, May has a creative plan to further the development of the ModMay brand: “Next year, I’m planning a Mod May Mobile trip, I’m calling it. I’m going to do a publicity tour for myself and the artists I represent,” she explains. “I’m going to drive across as much of the country as I can possibly cover in my camper van and see how much buzz I can generate for my artists and for my company as well.”
It’s definitely good to know that, in this digitally driven world, people connections still matter, people like Beattie and May can make a difference and efficiency and effectiveness don’t always supercede passion and excitement.
“It’s really just seeing those possibilities and making the most of them,” Beattie says. “I can’t sleep unless I know that I’ve done everything possible.”
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